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Lafayette could see new leadership at helm of oil and gas regulation overhaul

City Council to consider yearlong fracking moratorium Monday, on eve of election

By Anthony Hahn

Staff Writer

Posted:
11/05/2017 10:00:00 AM MST

Updated:
11/06/2017 01:55:41 PM MST

Workmen work at a drilling site for Crestone Peak Resources along Weld County Road 3 in Erie on June 7. (Helen H. Richardson / The Denver Post)

Potentially four new Lafayette City Councilmembers could begin their tenure at the onset of a controversial new fracking moratorium this month — and at the helm of what may prove a trailblazing overhaul of the city's oil and gas regulatory process.

Officials will vote on the drilling stay's second reading, and likely approve it, Monday evening; it would stay new oil and gas development until late 2018, unless the council fleshes out revamped drilling regulations before then, officials say.

The vote comes on the eve of an election that may shift half of the city's leadership.

Four council seats could be up for grabs; City Councilwomen Chelsea Behanna and Merrily Mazza and Councilman Gustavo Reyna are running for reelection (the seat of Brad Wiesley, who's term limited, is guaranteed to see a new face).

However, a complete identity shift among Lafayette's leadership is unlikely; residents would be hard pressed to find one of this year's 14 candidates with any sympathy for the oil and gas industry.

City leaders have typically approached decisions innate to Lafayette life with the left-leaning, progressive sensibilities often associated with the county at large, and this candidate pool likely portends more of the same.

If anything, the election may serve as a referendum foremost on the issue of fracking apparently headed for the city; a schism between two approaches for resisting oil and gas development within city limits spotlighted in recent weeks by the proposed moratorium.

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Prominent local fractivist groups have accused these regulation efforts as representing the city's renewed bid to do business with the oil and gas industry, rather than bar it outright.

"The moratorium is essentially just aiming for political goals and to prepare the city for eventual drilling," Mazza, who offered the sole "no" vote on the moratorium's first reading last month, said Friday. She's typically sided with the methods of activists in their approach to resist drilling, she says, pitting her against most of her fellow council members.

"This moratorium just gives the people on council political cover, so that it looks like they're doing something," she added. "I'd like to see people quit talking about regulation and the terms of their own surrender, and say hell no to any drilling."

Activists have echoed Mazza's sentiment; they say the stay would render useless the city's Climate Bill of Rights and Protections, a measure that effectively preempts drilling in Lafayette in the name of residents' health. That measure passed earlier this year.

If Lafayette approves the moratorium, the council is expected to get to work quickly on a string of new watershed drilling regulations: a mapping of all flowlines throughout the city, extending the city's setback requirements to 750 feet, restricting new drilling sites to that distance from existing development, and conversely, barring new, traditional development — such as residential and commercial — from coming within that distance of existing wells.

Such ordinances were stalled by planners earlier this year, and it's unclear if council will see these or something else entirely; but if it's approved, Lafayette would be the first community in the state to sanction such stringent setback requirements, according to Planning Manager Paul Rayl.

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